


World Turned Upside Down

by athaclena



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Drug Addiction, F/F, F/M, Graphic Depictions of Illness, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Not Standard A/B/O, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-22 22:54:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9628817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athaclena/pseuds/athaclena
Summary: In a world plagued by fertility crises, the big money is in treatments for infertility and products which mimic the comparatively rare individuals who are hyper-fertile: alpha and omega. Castiel Novak is a research biologist working for Roman Enterprises. When evidence comes to light linking the drug he's spent most of a decade working to perfect with the illegal (and potentially lethal) designer drug Leviathan, his carefully constructed world begins to disintegrate.Dean Winchester experiences his own paradigm shift one evening when he is dosed with Leviathan, triggering a terrible spiral of events out of his control. As the years wear on, Dean must decide what lengths he's prepared to go to, and ultimately what kind of man he wants to be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains graphic descriptions of medical treatments, illness, and a certain amount of body horror. I will post warnings about each chapter in the notes, but please pay attention to the tags - I'll add to them as I go along. This is not the standard Omega!Verse, and there will be a lot of made-up science and medicine, but it's as grounded in fact as I can make it.
> 
> I don't have a schedule in mind, largely because I don't have a big back-up of completed chapters. I'm going to try for every fortnight, but I might not manage that, so apologies in advance. I'll make sure my tumblr ([knittedgauntlets](http://knittedgauntlets.tumblr.com/)) has regular ETAs, and if there are any major gaps I'll update the author's notes here as well. I respond well to comments and kudos.
> 
> My eternal, undying gratitude and love to [wobblyheadeddollcaper](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wobblyheadeddollcaper), who is the best at everything.

_The film starts by panning around a laboratory: long metal tables, test tubes, computers, and equations on a whiteboard, pausing briefly on an image of human chromosomes before continuing on to a figure sitting on a stool in a lab coat. His face and voice have been digitised to give him anonymity, but it is still possible to hear his emotion._

_On the bottom of the screen, the words: CS, member of Roman Enterprises Bioscience and Medicine Team appear._

_The man's body language is closed and speaks of deep-seated guilt; he is hunched in on himself and rarely engages with the camera. His voice is soft through the filter._

_“All I wanted was to help people. The social problems caused by the various fertility crises, the personal traumas and hardships – we've all been touched by them.” He pauses and hunches further. “I just wanted to help.”_

 

Dean groaned when he saw the cars in the street - fucking Sam and his fucking waster friends taking advantage of Dad's absence a-fucking-gain – but at least the little shits had left him room to get parked in the driveway after he'd torn them a new one last time they'd pulled this crap. It didn't look like there were too many of them, at least. Maybe he could get to sleep before dawn this time.

Shit, he sounded like an old man even to himself. No wonder Sam wasn't listening to him. At least the kid's grades were still good; he and his friends took a wide variety of pills and powders, but they all wanted to go to better places than rehab, and so far they'd avoided the addictive stuff and kept their excesses to the weekend rather than school time. Part of Dean was impressed at their ability to compartmentalise their lives so effectively. Most of him was annoyed and exasperated at the whole 24 hour party people schtick.

A tiny, shameful part was devastatingly jealous. Sam hardly even seemed to try sometimes, and his grades were better than Dean's had ever been. All he had ever done as a student was some (well, quite a lot, whatever) underage drinking and the occasional toke on a joint.

That said, he had got laid a lot more than Sam seemed to manage, so at least there was that.

Dean trudged heavily towards the house, balancing the spoils of his 14 hour shift carefully. A couple portions of lasagne, some meatloaf, a few slices of turkey, and the grand prize – half a cherry pie. As a general kitchen dogsbody he was pretty low on the pecking order to get such a sweet haul, but everyone else had gone home to watch the game, so it was all his.

Frankie's wasn't the best place to work, but it did have some perks: the diner prided itself on its fresh food, so the kitchen staff got to take home the leftovers. His feet were killing him and his hands were raw, but he'd put up with a lot for free pie and more money in his paycheck, so it was all good. He kicked the door gently instead of disturbing the arrangement of containers in his arms, and waited for someone to let him in. No loud music tonight, so maybe they weren't wasted?

One look at Ash and Dean revised his hopes to “Maybe they're quiet wasted”. The kid's face was flushed and his pupils were dilated, but there was no red-eye or tremula or excessive energy, just a weird feeling of intensity emanating from his scrawny frame.

“Hey. Ash,” he said unenthusiastically.

“Dean! Dude, you come bearing gifts? You're the best ever.” Dean rolled his eyes and shouldered past him, heading to the kitchen. Ash was actually his favourite of Sam's friends, but he could be really annoying when he was high. The trick was not to let him get a head of steam going.

The kitchen was empty, and Dean took his time putting the food away and deciding whether he wanted to eat something more substantial than just pie. In the end, his desire for food slightly outweighed his desire never to prepare food again, and he put the meatloaf in the oven – Sam probably wouldn't touch it anyway, and it was more a half portion than a proper size, perfect for a late-night dinner.

Ash had disappeared back into the living room, and Dean climbed the stairs to his bedroom, keen to wear something that didn't smell of hot oil and fried food. The music might be fairly quiet, but the bass was pretty intense; he wasn't sure if he'd be able to get to sleep through it or – wait, were those panties on the floor?

Dean experienced a moment of pure dread as he followed the trail of clothes along the corridor into – yep, into his room. He sighed deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to ward off the headache he felt rising. He really did not want to see teenage ass getting it on in his bed, but he was pretty sure that's what lay behind door number one. He opted to hammer on it instead of opening it. No need for further mental scarring.

“Whoever's fucking in my bed better change my sheets when they're done or I will end their miserable fucking lives! And then leave my fucking house, you hear me?” he roared, suddenly furious with everything. There was no response from inside. “I can't hear you!”

A mumbled chorus of “Yes Dean, sorry Dean,” drifted through the door, from, Christ almighty, at least three separate voices. Well, whatever. Maybe they would change the damn sheets faster. Behind him, his brother's door creaked open, and Dean turned round to see a sheepish looking Sam wearing nothing more than boxers. Dean caught a glimpse of a dark-haired girl wrapped in a bedsheet huddled behind him, before he squeezed his eyes shut again.

“I can explain,” Sam offered, but Dean was done with this shit and silenced him with a gesture.

“I am going downstairs to have dinner and a beer. When I am done, your friends will be gone, and my room will be untainted by anything... sticky, are we clear? This is not cool, dude. Really, really not cool.”

Ignoring Sam's protestations and puppy-dog eyes, he marched back down the stairs, making his footsteps as heavy and menacing as possible. Fucking assholes. Thoughtless fucking assholes. Rude, thoughtless, fucking horndog assholes.

It briefly occurred to Dean that he was being terribly hypocritical, having done similar things in the not-too-distant past, but his twinge of conscience couldn't stand up to the righteous fury he felt at his possessions and sanctuary being violated, and he brushed it aside.

The oven had heated up by he time he had found a beer (stashed in a cleaning bucket under the sink) and downed half of it in one long pull. He shoved the meatloaf in to heat through – he was saving up for a microwave, but Sam was still growing, which really he wasn't sure was still possible, surely the air got thin that high up? Anyway. Kid needed clothes more than Dean needed a convenient way to reheat leftovers. Plus, eventually Dad would come back and demand that they moved again. He'd promised Sam senior year in one place, but once he was done... At least Dean would be able to get back to helping Dad hunt, rather than cleaning pots and chopping veg.

Deciding to stay in the kitchen rather than face whatever the fuck was going on in the living room, and by God he was going to make Sam steam clean the entire house tomorrow, Dean sat on a stool and switched off until the oven timer pinged. He was vaguely aware of people moving around upstairs, and the front door slamming a few times.

Ping. Food. Beer. Right. Dean could do this. He could be the mature and responsible adult. That was exactly what every 21 year old should be able to do.

Man, fuck his life.

Brady was standing behind him holding out a beer ingratiatingly when Dean turned round with his plate of only-slightly-dry meatloaf. “Hey, man, sorry about the room thing. Guess they couldn't wait 'til later, huh?”

Dean grunted. He didn't like Brady. He was happy enough to take the beer though, it was much nicer than Dean's now-empty bottle. He put the pie in the oven on a lower temperature; it would be heated through by the time he finished the meatloaf. “Is my living-room safe now?”

“Yeah, it's all good.” Brady looked similar to Ash in the weird high department, now that Dean came to give him a closer look. Come to think of it, so had Sam and his naked fun times friend. Ecstasy, maybe? He'd seen people on it before, but he had been drunk at the time so he didn't really remember much about it except everyone got really handsy. That would explain all the sex.

Dean followed him into the living room. The noise coming from above him suggested that his sheets were, in fact, being changed. Hopefully whoever was doing it wouldn't get distracted halfway through. He wasn't relishing the laundry load as it was. There weren't that many people in the room now – Ash was still there, arms waving, trying to explain something to Jo, who was sitting glowering in the corner with the look of a girl who was entirely sober in a room full of stoned people. She brightened up when she saw Dean, fellow traveller through sobriety. Meg and Lilith were kissing languidly, bed hair and swollen lips suggesting that they had hooked up sometime previously this evening, and Ruby was smirking at him in the corner, no longer afraid of him now he wasn't screaming at anyone. Ugh, Sam and Ruby. Dean really wished they would stay broken up sometime.

He sat on the floor and started shovelling food in his mouth, washing it down with beer. Brady passed another over to him before he was even halfway through the first, smiling intently at him. Dean frowned back at him, confused at his generosity. “Uh, thanks.”

Brady pursed his lips, clearly a little dissatisfied with their interaction. Dean was too tired to try to work out what he wanted. Brady started to lean a little closer, ready to bitch about his friends no doubt, when he was interrupted by Ash from across the room. “I'm telling you Jo, you just need a little more! You should feel this, it's amazing.”

“I'm not taking any more. It doesn't work on me. Whatever, I can deal. Sometimes drugs don't. You know Ruby never gets anything off weed, it must just be like that.” Jo sounded like she was approaching breaking point, and Ash was clearly too high to notice or care, which was a dangerous combination.

Damn, Dean hated being the responsible adult. “Take what, man?” Distracting Ash for long enough for Jo to either cool down or make her escape was key. Ash bounced over his way, so it worked. Brady pulled back a little.

“Leviathan, man! It's this amazing new thing, makes you feel like an Alpha, dude! All strong an' hot an' shit!” Ash was clearly really excited about it. Dean hated that word though, Alpha. Just because someone was hyper-androus didn't mean they should be in charge or whatever, it just meant they had a weird dick and could knock people up easily.

Yeah, Dean wasn't bitter about that whole thing at all. “New? So, like, no-one knows what it does to you long-term?”

“Totally safe, man! You can't even overdose on it, your body metabolises it too fast. It just gives you a few hours of awesome and then bam, back to normal. Tell him, Brady!” And of fucking course it would be Brady who found this shit, he was the one with the rich daddy and the dubious high-class dealers living in his neighbourhood.

Dean wasn't bitter about that either. Nope. Not one little bit.

“Yeah, it's the hot new thing. Better than E, lasts longer than coke. You want to try some?” Brady held out a little baggie filled with red pills.

Dean shook his head. “Not my scene, man, you know that,” he replied, finishing the last of the meatloaf off. Damnit. Now he would have to move to get pie. He started to lever himself up when Brady took his plate from him, smiling at him again.

“I know, I know, you're straight edge,” he laughed as he jumped up, full of the energy of youth, and apparently also a bunch of synthetic hormones. Dean spluttered for a response – straight edge? Him? - but Brady waved him off. “I got it. You look beat. Ice cream with the pie, right?”

Dean nodded, and leant back against the wall, tired enough that he could just tune Ash out as he started banging on about the greatness of Leviathan. He heard Sam clatter his way down the stairs, graceful as a hippo, and then voices coming from the kitchen. Some laughter followed, before the delicious smell of cherry pie wafted toward Dean's nose, disturbing his doze.

By the time Dean finished the pie, burning his mouth in the process but whatever, totally worth it, Sam's party had wound down to him, Sam, Ash and Brady. Jo had complained of a headache and been driven home by Meg, and the other girls had left as well. Ash and Brady were both regular crashers after parties, so Dean supposed that the spirit of his earlier demand had been kept, even if not the letter.

Sam had found some rerun of Buffy on TV, season 4 unfortunately but it was still funny to watch a defanged Spike trying to be a badass. Brady was leaning next to him on the couch.

“So, Dean, how are you feeling now? Woken up any?” he practically purred in Dean's ear. Wait, was he hitting on Dean? Was that what this was? That would explain the last hour, Dean supposed. Weird though.

A wave of dizziness washed over him. “Nah, man, feeling pretty beat. Think I might go crash.” He got up, blinking a couple of times as he found his balance. He must be more tired than he thought. “Don't stay up too late, Sam, don't you have a shift at the library tomorrow?”

Sam seemed to be having a silent argument with Brady made up of eye-rolling and bitch faces on both sides, but he managed to drag his attention to Dean for long enough to respond. “Uh, yeah, right. I'll hit the sack soon. Don't worry. Um, sleep well.” Dean waved at them and closed the door behind himself before tackling the stairs with a sigh. He was too young to feel this old.

He was almost at the top when he started to smell purple.

 

_The film cuts to a wide overhead shot of Times Square, thousands of people crossing the streets. A soothing voice begins the commentary. “Since the dawn of time, our world has struggled through times when the land and sea became suddenly and unpredictably infertile.” Pictures of lost species cross the screen: the moa, the dodo, the passenger pigeon, the panda. “Hundreds of species have gone extinct over recorded history.”_

_(Astute listeners will note that the wording is carefully balanced so as to give offence to neither atheist nor creationist.)_

_The screen returns to Times Square. “Even we are not immune to these great Extinction Events, and whole civilisations have been lost within a single generation. But we are not without weapons to fight against our own destruction. From our farming to our hyper-fertile sons and daughters, we have endured disaster after disaster.”_

 

Sam was having a really, really good night before Dean came home. He felt incredible, full of energy, mind working overtime. Maybe he could even study on this stuff? Although, given that Ruby was riding him through round four in less than an hour, maybe that wasn't his best idea. He'd get blue balls. Or maybe callouses. Nothing good could come of it.

But that was another thing that was so great! He was still making good decisions! He was wearing a condom, and recognising that maybe Leviathan wasn't the best thing ever to study on! God, being hyper-androus must be amazing, even if they only got this feeling a fraction of the time.

Sam stopped thinking for a while in order to concentrate on the matter at hand. Dean started yelling mere minutes after he came, which was much better timing than last time he had been with Ruby and Dean had come home. He scrambled for a pair of boxers and threw the sheet at Ruby before opening the door – Dean screaming at his friends was totally not how he had wanted this night to go. Although, were Josh and Brady and Amy having sex in Dean's room? Yikes. That would explain the screaming for sure.

Dean, however, refused to listen to any of his perfectly reasonable explanations as to why tonight had ended the way it had, and how he had meant to have food ready for Dean and everything because he was such a great brother, and there was beer put aside especially for Dean so really Dean didn't have to be angry and disappointed. Jerk. Sam found himself getting really angry with his stupid asshole brother.

He did change Dean's sheets though. He was angry, not suicidal. Besides, even he had to admit that sleeping on the jizz of strangers was really gross. Josh and Amy slunk out of the house, along with the couple (ew) in Dad's (ew) room (ew ew ew). He would totally deal with that tomorrow. Although he might be back early... no, Dad always called at least a few hours before coming home these days, after that time he had found Dean with some Lisa chick.

Dean should totally have called, that was it! That would have ensured this whole thing hadn't happened. Stupid jerk. Sam stomped downstairs to throw a load of laundry on and see what everyone else was doing.

Brady was in the kitchen, pulling a pie out of the oven. Honestly, Dean's pie fixation was becoming dangerously calorific.

“Hey Sam,” Brady greeted him. “How're you feeling?”

“Wonderful, yeah. Leviathan's great! How's everyone else?”

“Good, yeah, apart from Jo, it never seemed to hit her. Maybe it was a dud pill or something.” Brady paused. “Your brother's pretty tired though. I could... liven him up?” He held up the baggie of Leviathan tablets.

“Dude, no! Drugging people without their knowledge is dangerous and, like, really unethical.”

“You said it yourself before, he has a huge stick up his ass about the drugs thing. Maybe this would loosen him up about it. Let him see that there's nothing to worry about if we're all careful.” There was a sly look on Brady's face that Sam didn't like the look of, but he was right about Dean being a dick about drugs, and he was right about the careful bit. “Besides, wouldn't it be funny? It hardly does anything at all, it'd just make him edgy without knowing why. That squirming right at the start when you get horny...”

“I do not need to see my brother horny again, dude. I've seen him hide enough boners. He's not that good at subtle.” Still, the idea was kind of tempting. There was no real harm in it, right? There was no danger with Leviathan.

Brady could sense Sam's desire to be persuaded and was more than happy to oblige. “Besides, he was really out of line, yelling at us like that. I know for a fact he's done it himself. I was at Leroy's party last year, and Dean did not exactly cover himself in glory.”

That hypocritical asshole! Sam handed Brady the pestle and mortar he'd bought Dean for Christmas – his conscience gave a massive twinge at that but he ignored it, fuelled by the righteous and justified anger burning through his veins – and Brady got to work grinding one of the Leviathan pills down to powder. Sam delicately tasted a couple of grains and made a face – drugs were always bitter, but this reminded him of the sharp and urgent taste of adrenaline, hard to disguise even in pie.

He had a solution though, or rather, Dean had already come up with one himself. The spice rack had a jar of brown sugar mixed with cinnamon, and it should cover the chemical tang perfectly. Brady carefully lifted the top of the pie off and sprinkled the powdered drug evenly over the steaming filling, and Sam repeated his actions with the sugar mix before dropping the crust back in place. He added a generous amount of ice cream on top as well.

Brady caught his eyes and winked, and they shared a conspiratorial laugh before walking through to the living room. Nearly everyone had gone now, just Ash and Dean left, and Sam turned on the TV to find something to watch.

Dean ate the pie like it was going out of fashion, so tired he didn't even try to gross anyone out by speaking with his mouth full or anything. Sam felt another pang of guilt at this; he knew how hard Dean was working, saving as much as he could for Sam's college tuition and paying off their credit card debt from the bad year when Dad was laid up with pneumonia after being shot in the lung by a bounty. But his conscience kicked in well after Dean had finished inhaling the pie, so he didn't say anything, just kept half an eye on his brother.

Unlike everyone else, Dean didn't start flushing within fifteen minutes of taking the drug. By half an hour in, he was still the same as before, tired and wan against the light of the TV. Must be another one like Jo, Sam decided. Brady had warned them that his dealer said that the drug just didn't seem to work on some people. Probably for the best; he really had seen enough of horny Dean to last a lifetime, and he had no desire to see him macking on Brady or – God forbid – Ash.

Sam breathed a small sigh of relief when Dean excused himself for bed, although he thought he caught a look of anger cross Brady's face. He really didn't get on with Dean most of the time; he must have been more keen to give Dean some comeuppance than Sam had realised. Yeah, tonight really hadn't been Sam's finest night, he thought, sober enough now that he could look back on his behaviour and wince. He'd never lost control or anything, but he wasn't sure he liked himself on Leviathan. Ecstasy was definitely better if he wanted to get horny and happy.

He got up to get another round of beers when he heard a drumming sound from the top of the stairs. What the hell? Maybe the Leviathan had kicked in really suddenly and Dean had started drumming the walls, or something? He did that when he was really upbeat.

But no, it sounded too arrhythmic even for Dean at his drunkest – his brother was shit at carrying a tune, but he had excellent rhythm. Something weird was happening. Sam took the stairs two at a time, trying to work out where Dean was from the noise – oh, no, no no no, Dean was spasming on the floor, literally foaming at the mouth, must be a seizure oh God oh fuck what should he do – something about a spoon? No, wait, just make sure he couldn't choke on vomit – oh God please no – or hurt himself.

Sam realised that he had been screaming for help only when Ash and Brady were standing over him and he noticed that his voice was hoarse. Brady was white and still behind him, but Ash was kneeling down by Dean, holding him in the recovery position and shouting at Brady to get his car up the driveway now.

The seizure finally finished, and Dean's body went lax. At some point during it he had lost bladder control; he would be mortified and furious about that, Sam thought, when he woke up. Which he would do any second now.

Any second.

“Sam, come on, we have to carry him to the car now,” Ash said gently. “You got insurance, amigo?”

Sam blinked tears out of his eyes. They dripped onto his brother's still, waxen face. “Uh. Yeah. Uh, medkit on the kitchen wall, in an envelope. I'll carry Dean,” he added in a whisper, no longer able to trust his voice, oh God, what had he done, what had he done – no. Time for panic later. Help Dean now. He could do this. He had to. Dean would do it for him. Had already done it for him.

He huffed out a single sob as he hoisted Dean over his shoulder into a fireman's lift, and carefully walked down the stairs to the front door, doing his best not to jostle Dean any more than absolutely necessary. Ash was standing in the driveway swearing. There was no sign of Brady, or his car.

Fuck.

Sam grabbed the keys to the Impala and threw then at Ash. “Drive. Lawrence Memorial is fastest if you take the back road.” Dean was going to be so pissed that he'd let Ash behind the wheel, but Sam needed to be in the back seat, he needed to be there for Dean when he woke up. He carefully placed his brother in the back, lying on his side – no seatbelts in here anyway – and ran round to the other side of the car, sliding himself in under Dean's head. He dug blindly for a blanket in the footwell and covered his brother with it, hands trembling.

Dean made no sound or movement. Even his breathing was silent. His pulse was strong though, so that was good, right? Strong and fast. Oh, shit, fast was bad. Shit. Shit.

Ash was driving fast but smooth, much like Dean and God, that thought made Sam's heart clench. He met Sam's eyes in the mirror. “Something happened, didn't it,” he asked softly. “Brady took off like a bat out of hell, and not in the cool Meatloaf way.”

“We, uh. Put some. Um. Fuck,” Sam ground out. “We dosed his pie with a tab of Leviathan.” He was shaking in earnest now, the tremula a grotesque parody of Dean's seizure.

“Not cool, my dude. But... that shouldn't have happened,” Ash said, one hand gesturing to Dean. “Leviathan's just a synthetic form of the testosterone-equivalent produced by hyper-androus types when they're in the hyper-fertile part of their cycle, right? There's no reason for it to do that to anyone.” Sam forgot, sometimes, how smart Ash was, and treated him like the white-trash stoner he pretended to be. But Ash was on course for a full ride at MIT – had actually been head-hunted by them – and meticulously researched his drug habit with the same care he took with his miniaturisation projects, or his computer programming.

Ash frowned suddenly. “Unless maybe there's some underlying fertility thing going on? Do you know of anything like that?” Sam shook his head, eyes fixed on his brother. “Alrighty then, we'll see what the docs say. But you have to tell them. They need to know this.”

“I know”, Sam whispered. “I'll tell them everything.”

“Uh, dude, no offence, but have you lost your mind? Tell them he took a pill by accident thinking it was aspirin or something. Leviathan's not illegal, but drugging people is.” Sam flinched, and he hunched in on himself as another tear worked its way down his face to splash on Dean's forehead. “No, um, not like illegal illegal, just – there's stuff they could charge you with even for an accidental ingestion, but they'd need to want to, so let's not give them a reason to, okay? This is bad, but look, I know you and Brady, and it was his idea, and he won't go down for it. So don't you go down for it either. Okay?”

Sam was too worried and guilty and heartsick to try to work through the full ethics of the situation, but he would do this just now and then ask Dean what he wanted to do when he woke up. That was the best thing to do. Dean always knew what to do with this stuff. Sam's moral compass could be swayed by other people pretty easily – tonight was a truly superb example of that – but Dean's instincts about right and wrong were never off. Sometimes he ignored them, but he always knew.

“I'm so sorry, Dean,” he whispered. “Please kick my ass over this. Please.”

Ash stayed silent for the rest of the drive. Dean remained still as – still as a statue. Not the other thing. Sam's blood sugar had started to restabilise by the time the Impala pulled to a halt in the Urgent Care parking outside the ER, which made his efforts to get Dean into a wheelchair much more safe than they would have been otherwise.

The charge nurse looked at them and frowned. Sam saw her dismiss them as kids drinking too much, but Ash surprised him again. “He had a grand mal seizure 20 minutes ago, he seized for five minutes at least before stopping, and he hasn't regained conciousness since. He's had three beers and we think he accidentally took some Leviathan, which you might not have heard of, it's this designer drug thing that you're totally right to judge us for but not him, he needs help.”

“His heart's beating fast,” Sam added. Dean was a terrible colour under the fluorescent lights of the waiting room, skin flushing and paling with worrying febrile regularity.

The nurse pursed her lips at them, but called over a free doctor to speak to while Sam filled in the paperwork as quickly as he could. Why didn't they just admit him? Was it the drugs thing?

And then, almost like he was possessed, Dean launched himself from the chair and crashed to the floor, his face a rictus and animal noises emerging from his throat.

Time seemed to turn into a zoetrope, one flickering image after another. His brother's wrist bending backwards with a terrible crack. Ash, screaming for help, tears streaming down his face. The terrified intern holding Dean's body as still as he could. People watching all around, horrified and afraid. Doctors racing towards them, one with a crash cart, one stabbing a needle into Dean's neck. Someone holding him back as he strained towards his brother, his best friend.

Dean lifted onto a gurney, limbs still spasming until suddenly his back arched and he stopped doing anything.

Someone doing CPR.

Dean's chest exposed, tattoo bright and sharp against the livid white of his skin. Paddles applied. A voice saying “Clear,” and then, “Again.”

Then, “Pulse is good.”

And then Dean was gone and he was holding a broken pen, bruises flowering on his arms, and the nurse asking for insurance details. Ash was gone. Another blink, and Ash was back, “I parked Baby, amigo, she'll be fine,” and, “Dude, you need to call your Dad.”

The doctor again. “Your brother's stable for now, Mr Winchester, but we need to run more tests to find out what's wrong with him.”

His father's phone ringing, and ringing, and ringing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On seizures: If you see someone having a seizure, place them in the recovery position and move things out of their way so they don't hurt themselves. Don't force anything into their mouths. It's not actually possible to swallow your tongue, so don't worry about that.
> 
> The smelling purple thing actually happens to my flatmate when he has a seizure. He's not synaesthesiac the rest of the time, only when he's about to seize.
> 
> On giving people chemicals without their knowledge: Don't do this. Especially don't do this with psychoactive chemicals. It is a form of assault which, like rape, removes the victim's agency and potentially leaves them in a vulnerable or life-threatening situation. The ethics of this are not complicated to understand.


	2. Chapter 2

_The film now shows shots of medical advances from the past hundred years. “In recent times, our greatest weapon against Extinction Events has been our minds. We have been able to predict cycles of crop failures and re-seed barren lands; we have created vast libraries of plant and animal DNA in order to prevent future catastrophes, and there is a vast range of medical techniques at our disposal to preserve the lives of our fragile newborns and the women and men who carry them._

_“But the most exciting developments have been taking place in the field of biochemistry. Our scientists have worked tirelessly on hormone therapies to enhance the fertility of everyone._

_“The consequences of this drive for knowledge have been severe.”_

 

“Dr Novak?” A hand tentatively patted him on the shoulder, and Castiel realised that he had probably ignored the lab assistant – he thought her name was Hailey – for her last several attempts at getting his attention. Well, that was embarrassing, albeit only slightly.

“Sorry, I was distracted. What can I do for you?” he asked politely, tearing his attention away from the microscope and its tempting and fascinating array of tissue slices.

Hailey – no, Helen. Hael. Ailie? Oh, crap – took a deep breath. “Dr, um, Naomi said you should go home.” She looked deeply uncomfortable. “I think there might be journalists outside? So you'll have to speak to them when you go.”

Journalists? Castiel blinked at Ha - at his assistant - and tipped his head in his usual manner. "Journalists? Why would there be any journalists? Why would they want to speak to me?"

She shrugged, looking just as confused as he felt. "Dr, um, Naomi didn't say. She looked pretty pissed though," she volunteered. "She muttered something about hoping you'd be your usual, um, taciturn and aggressively honest self, but I don't think I was supposed to hear that part."

Castiel frowned at his microscope and carefully started to put away his slices. His back was sore, and his eyes were strained; starting again and hoping the discomfort went away was probably an exercise in futility. He had found that once he had begun to notice the complaints of his body, he couldn't ignore them effectively, which was why he trained his lab assistants not to disturb him unless it was absolutely necessary. He grudgingly thought that Hellion (no, that was clearly not right) had probably made the right call this time. He wanted to note it on her permanent record, but HR didn't "get" him, so it was best not to. Maybe in her Christmas card.

"She didn't say anything about me needing to see her, did she?" he asked, a note of trepidation creeping into his voice. Hallie (maybe) smiled at him a little, and shook her head. "You should head out the back way tonight. Or sleep in the breakout room, if they don't leave. You've not done your media training yet, have you? I never remember when they put people through it."

"Not yet, no. I'll sneak out when you go, if that's okay." He assented, and they gathered their possessions and made their way to the lobby.

Roman Enterprises had a large number of offices and laboratories round the world, but as far as Castiel was aware they all looked roughly the same: white walls and floors, corporate logos discrete but everywhere, and sponsored artwork hanging on the walls. The art usually gave him a headache if he looked at it for too long. He wasn't sure if he was alone in that though; he hated socialising with his colleagues and co-workers.  
At the doors, he met Haeley's (he was pretty sure that was right, now he'd had enough time to think about it) eyes, and solemnly saluted her. “Wait until they're circling me like the sharks they are and then head out. I'll keep them off you. If you don't see me again, tell my brothers they're pains in the ass.”

Her eyes sparkled with humour – at last, a lab assistant who appreciated him – and she saluted back. “Your sacrifice will be remembered in the trenches of Lab 2d and beyond. Go with God, brave warrior.” He huffed a laugh, straightened his face, and left the building.

There weren't that many journalists, really, because a lot of the people surrounding him were photographers and determined people with cameras and boom microphones. There were enough that he was feeling distinctly uncomfortable, but they weren't trying to stop him or cause him harm: they just wanted a story. One he could apparently provide. Or not provide, which was probably what Naomi wanted.

Sometimes, Castiel wished he still had it in him to pray. As the mob surrounded him, he realised this was one of those times. Microphones were shoved in his face and so many questions were shouted that he couldn't hear any one thing over anything else and finally he managed to find a pause in the babble. “I can't hear you if you all talk over each other. If you want me to make a statement, you have to actually let me hear the question first.”

Presumably the reporters had already encountered this problem and had had a struggle for dominance, because the next question was uttered by a single voice and the rest of the group was silent. “Dr Novak, do you have anything to say about Leviathan?”

Castiel blinked at them, still walking to his car. “A mythical beast from the Bible? The book of Job, I believe.”

“No, the drug. Do you have anything to say about the similarity of Leviathan to HA-Ceptin?”

“The drug you personally worked on?” another voice chimed in.

“What? Roman Enterprises cannot be held accountable for copycat pharmaceuticals. I'm sure our Legal department is looking into it.” He tried to push his way faster through the crowd, but there were a lot of people here and his car was quite far away from the entrance. He could feel his body starting to draw in on itself, making a smaller target for these predators, but with an effort he kept his body language open and controlling as he had been laboriously taught in the media training seminars. It took a lot of work; apparently his body was pretty keen on being submissive right now.

…Interesting; was there a correlation between the number of people and the intensity of the desire to withdraw? It was more of a social science question but he could devise an experiment to test it, if only the interruptions would stop.

Alas, they did not. “Leviathan has been implicated in the hospitalisations of hundreds of men and women in the past eighteen months, with seventy confirmed deaths so far. Analysis today shows a, uh, a 'marked similarity' between your fertility drug and the latest designer drug on the market. Is there anything you want to tell us now before the truth comes out?” The questioner was a well-known member of the sensationalist papers; Castiel was not worried about him.

“As I said before, Roman Enterprises cannot be held accountable for copycat pharmaceuticals. I have no doubt that our Legal department is looking into this matter, and if any copyright infraction has taken place they will act. As they have done in the past. I believe your own paper recalls what it feels like when our Legal team takes a personal interest in things.” The journalist in question blanched, and several other members of the mob gave dirty sniggers; Ferrigno himself had taken on the paper, and it only survived as a name at all because it had been bought out for a laughably small sum of money by one of the more avaricious and less picky multinationals.

Castiel had made it to his car, and the journalists reluctantly peeled off him and stood back. He climbed in, gave them a bland smile, and pulled away with a screech of tyres – media training stressed the need to keep the press at bay and off guard. He saw Haeley in his rear-view mirror, climbing into her own vehicle and heading for the south exit unnoticed. Excellent work on both their parts, he thought smugly, and drove home whistling cheerily.

 

_“Many of the wonders created by science have had terrible effects which we have only learned years or even decades after we began to use them every day. Many more animals are on the verge of extinction because of our direct interference in their biological cycles. Bananas are a ticking genetic time-bomb due to forced growth techniques: we know that something soon will cause them to become extinct, but we cannot know when or what._

_“The use of armomycin in farmyard animals has led to mass infertility of several different species, and their populations are now maintained by time-consuming and expensive artificial insemination techniques, and by the genetic bottleneck of hyper-androus males and females. It is estimated that half of all Jersey cows are now so closely related that further inbreeding will cause dangerous recessive genes to become the norm. The situation for most pets is far worse.”_

 

Dean woke up and there was nothing but pain and he tried to scream but there was a tube and he couldn't move and there was a hand on his arm and a hiss and then the world dissolved.

Dean woke up and there was nothing but pain light stabbing through his eyes head throbbing fit to burst someone speaking but it sounded like a freaking foghorn oh god his skin was too tight and he tried to claw the pain out like it was a physical thing but hands held him down and then he could smell purple and -

Dean woke up an there was nothing but pain but he really didn't care any more. What the fuck was going on? He tried to speak but his mouth was more arid than Nevada and his throat felt scraped raw. His eyes weren't focussing properly on anything. He could feel a bunch of tubes going into his body. ...Wait, was that even possible? Could he feel the tubes, or just the insertion sites? Feeling the tubes would be awesome, like a superpower he hadn't known about until now, although thinking about it it was a really lame superpower. There were a lot of noises in the background, beeps and hisses and drips and footsteps. And then he smelled purple. Again. Wait, shit, that was bad - 

Dean woke up and there was a light blinding him and he was trapped he felt something cool flowing up his arm and  
everything  
went  
away  
slowly

Dean woke up and his wrist was sore and his skin felt too hot, but it was nothing compared to the grinding agony of his abdomen. He tried to stop a whimper from escaping but failed in the force of the onslaught. Fortunately for his manliness, his throat was too parched to make more sound than a tiny puff of air. Actually, that wasn't fortunate. That was bad. His eyes were practically glued shut with crustiness, which was gross, also sore, and he gave up trying to open them. He tried moving his good arm around a little.

So far, so good, although he was already wiped out from this movement business. Now... he was in hospital, right? It certainly smelled like one, all sour antiseptic tang, unwashed body, faint hint of despair. So, reasoning this through, he should have a call button within arm's reach. But which arm? The good arm, or the one that was a heavy throbbing mass of pain?

Some kind soul had had enough foresight to predict his current situation though, and he found a plastic thing on a wire just by his twitching fingers. At least Dad had drilled all that left-handed practice into him as a kid, tedious as it was at the time, and he carefully but smoothly manipulated the hand-hold until he found a button. Which he then pressed. Several times. The pain was getting quite excruciating now. Dean was pretty sure he would be crying right now if he had, like, any moisture in his face.

The approaching footsteps stopped by his bed, and he managed a faint moan which he hoped could be interpreted as “water” by someone skilled in the art of decoding Patient.

“I'm going to rub some ice on your lips, that should help the thirst,” a coolly professional voice said. It didn't, but it did feel nice, and he managed to move his tongue enough to get hold of a couple of drips. Not enough! Nowhere near enough. The ice chip moved away, and he did in fact manage an honest-to-god whimper at that, so at least some progress was being made.

He forgave the hand when it wiped his face down with a damp cloth, gentle over his eyes but firm enough to get rid of the gunk. He opened them and gazed upon the face of his new best friend: a middle-aged Latina, pleasantly rounded figure he wanted to burst into tears on, happy smile on her face.

“Welcome back, Mr Winchester. You gave everyone quite the scare.” She held a straw to his lips. “Take a very small sip. Don't want you to choke, now, that would be embarrassing.” Her eyes crinkled at him. His own blurred suddenly with the tears he hadn't thought he still had. They rolled slowly down his cheeks as he carefully – so carefully – drank everything she let him have.

“How. Long?” It took three attempts to even get that much out; his voice was hoarse and low.

“You've been in Intensive Care for three days. You had a bad seizure at home, do you remember?” He frowned slightly, and quirked his eyebrows in the closest he could come to a shrug. “You've had a few more since you've been here, but none for the last day or so.”

Dean tried hard to think, which sent a stab of pain through his head and made him grimace. But hang on, the pain brought a faint memory with it, what was the word? Syna... sinny... aesthetathingy... “'Member. Smelling purple. Don't usually. Was that, maybe?”

“Yes, probably. It's good you remember, that's a really good sign. Hopefully you won't have any more but if you get any warning, press the call button.” She checked various things round about him as she spoke, smiling in satisfaction.

Dean took in a deep, shuddering breath. “Hurts. Arm, head, throat, belly.”

She frowned in concern. “Your wrist was broken in a seizure, and the headache is probably from that too. The throat, well, you were intubated for a while until we got the seizures under control – it was a scary few hours here – and you've shouted a fair bit at times too. Your abdomen... it should settle down soon. Right now, I'll give you something stronger for the pain, but no more sedative, okay? We'll talk more when you're more recovered.”

She injected something into the IV line in his arm, and Dean felt coolness flooding up his arm again. “Sleep, Dean. You need to sleep. You can see your family tomorrow.” He quirked a smile at that, and obediently closed his eyes, soothed by the chemical haze that she had provided. She wrote something on his chart, and her footsteps faded into the distance between one breath and the next.

 

_“Although our interference has caused these disasters, it is important to remember that science has also protected and preserved both individual lives and entire species. The scientific community has worked hard to move past the paternalistic attitude of the mid-20th century which saw so many so-called advances prove harmful, and so much harm done to vulnerable populations of humans and animals alike. There are now rigorous and stringent protocols and procedures in place to avoid environmental catastrophes, with severe internationally recognised and enforced criminal repercussions for even the slightest transgression._

_“At least, in theory. The reality is murkier.”_

 

Castiel's personal routine was less strict than his professional one, but he tended to adhere closely to the same kinds of patterns every day. On returning home from work, he would prepare dinner, watch the news while eating it, read for an hour to allow time for digestion, do some form of exercise for another hour, and then read until bedtime. He dropped the routine entirely for friends or family members, although since his last argument with Gabriel he had not seen any of the latter, and he varied his reading material and exercise depending on his mood.

The big advantage of the routine was that it was flexible enough to allow for late hours at the lab or unexpected hold-ups by nosy journalists. He was definitely running later than usual today, but he still had plenty of time to follow his normal dinnertime, then work out for a while, quick but intense, then lie in the bath with a novel and go to bed warm and clean. Perfect.

His dinner was a microwaved portion of the chilli he had carefully prepared and frozen last weekend, with mixed-grain rice and a small handful of cheese on top. He settled in on the couch and turned on the television, flicking between news channels to get a sense of the big stories of the day: another politician caught having an affair, a doping scandal in sport, and the usual scare stories about migrants, gang warfare, terrorists and GM crops. How boring. He changed the channel again.

This one was different though. The news story was about Leviathan, and he watched the recorded segment in the hospital closely. One room full of people in a city was hardly a plague of Biblical proportions, but how many people even took designer drugs on a weekly or monthly basis? The number couldn't be that high. And extrapolating upwards from a small self-selecting sample size was always problematic.

Really, he should just put this out of his mind. Roman Enterprises had a very large number of gifted people making sure that their copyright was preserved. He didn't have to get involved in this just to satisfy his own curiosity. The sense of foreboding he felt was surely just be cause this was the second time he had encountered this story in one day, and the human brain was geared towards spotting patterns even when there were none. It was a survival trait.

Even if the tired face of the doctor on the screen was detailing exactly the side effects of an earlier version of HA-Ceptin. Everything that changed brain chemistry had those effects if the balance was off. It meant nothing.

The segment finished with a lingering look at a picture of one of the dead boys. “Seizures leading to coma and eventual death.” Castiel shivered, and pushed his chilli away unfinished. He had lost his appetite.

Perhaps he should look over his notes again in the morning. Just to satisfy his curiosity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bananas and pets thing is actually true. Bananas are one plant virus away from extinction, and they've been so heavily genetically modified (through farming, the original genetic modification) from the original stock that it would take decades to pollinate them back into existence. And most of the major breeds of cats and dogs are so inbred that they experience health complications from it, on top of any complications brought on by what we bred them for. I'm not sure about farm animals, but I'd be unsurprised if the same thing was true for them.
> 
> All of the drugs in this will be made-up, but I'm basing the names on actual naming conventions so they might look similar to something that really exists. This is me covering my ass here: none of this is real, it's an A/B/O alternate universe, and whilst I care about the details there's only so accurate that the science can possibly be. Okay? Don't base any decisions on this fic. It's _fiction_.
> 
> If you have any concerns about anything raised I encourage you to research from a variety of different sources, and to be sceptical about anything that purports to tell you the real truth. Actual facts don't usually need to advertise themselves as pure and unadulterated by big pharma/big agra cover-ups. It's usually not a malevolent conspiracy, it's just greed and stupidity. Look for meta-studies that aggregate data from a wide variety of sources.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: on-going for medical stuff, mild emetophobia warning. This chapter starts throwing around technical terminology.

_“The work of the United Nations Fertility Oversight Unit is deemed so important that even otherwise secretive and closed-off countries and nation-states allow access to their teams of specialist forensic scientists in the event of a disaster, and all of the research on anything to do with human or animal fertility is screened by them. They have managed to prevent or contain upwards of forty known crises since the formation of the Unit in the mid Fifties._

_“As any law enforcement officer knows, however, there are work-arounds for the dedicated criminal. Unfortunately, this includes organisations.” The view on the screen changes from the cool white of the UNHC in Geneva, back to a wide shot of the hunched figure of CS._

_“The human cost of such actions cannot be ignored.”_

 

Dean laboriously blinked his way to consciousness, piece by piece. There was his head, aching and thick, with the added bonus of a throbbing throat when he swallowed. His chest was bruised and his abdomen inflamed and swollen. Arms, one was fine but the other was broken and heavy with a cast. His legs were okay, but his feet were cold. He was slightly nauseous, and some heavy painkiller whispered through his veins making everything tolerable and slow.

It took an embarrassingly long time to focus on anything. The white walls and ceiling didn't help, in his defence, confusing his eyes and making everything take longer to resolve than it should, but the drugs were far more potent than anything he'd ever taken before. Never take a joint from a man called Don; but even that was less than this.

He had a nagging sensation that he had a catheter, but he couldn't find it in himself to be embarrassed, just relieved that he wouldn't have to move to piss. Was this why Sammy did drugs? He could get on board with this feeling.

Think his name and he appeared: “Dean? Are you awake?” Sam's voice was ragged and soft, don't-disturb-the-patient quiet. Dean clawed his way to lucidity and remembered the nurse: three days unconscious; seizures; broken arm. Well, shit.

“I'm awake,” he slurred, too out of it to try for reassuring.

“Dean! Oh, thank you God,” Sam exclaimed, and Dean was pretty sure that the sparkling on his face was tears but he couldn't quite focus right yet.

“M'okay Sammy. I'll be fine. How're you?”

At that Sam burst into sobs, so Dean presumed that he was not doing so well, all things considered. He couldn't reach his brother with his good hand, and Sam was too far away for his bad hand to touch and console, so Dean babied him through it. “Hey, hey, it's okay, I'm here. It'll all be okay. Don't worry.”

A terrified and selfish part of Dean wished someone would do that for him again, and he was too high and pain-ridden to suppress it properly. How could he want comfort when Sam so clearly needed it? That wasn't how things worked. Sam always came first.

In between sobs Dean managed to make out, “I'm so sorry, really, I'm so sorry,” but all the other choked syllables and partial words were too blurry to make out. He kept trying to make Sammy feel better, that was his job, and eventually the sobbing wound down.

Movement on the other side, and someone else was there: a doctor by the scrubs, middle height, lean and hungry, and bone tired. Dean would have empathised if he was capable of it.

“Good to see you awake, Mr Winchester. I'm going to check you over, and then we'll see about updating you on your condition and getting you moved to another ward,” the doctor said. Sam shrank back into his seat, and Dean was put through an efficient but thorough medical barrage. By the end of it he was feeling both more tired and more sober, and his various aches and pains were complaining a lot more than they had been. Still, it was nice to think clearly.

They were left barely any time before the next doctor came in, nowhere near enough time to get proper information out of Sam, who was annoyingly closed-mouthed at the best of times. The new doctor was clearly senior in age and in confidence, with flashes of grey in her hair and lines beginning to score her frown and smile permanently on her face.

“Mr Winchester. I am Dr Visyak, and I've been in charge of your care here. I have some information about your condition for you. I can go over it now, or when you're feeling better. Which would you prefer?” Her eyes flicked to Sam and back to Dean, and he realised she was giving him an out. Sam would get the truth from him eventually though, and in the conspicuous absence of Dad Dean wanted someone else there. Seizures were bad. The Big C bad, maybe.

“Now's fine, thanks,” he replied with a nod, trying to gird his loins as best he could when his loins had a tube in them and he was so scared he was grateful for it. “What's wrong with me, Doc?” He couldn't control the waver in his voice betraying his fear. Sam scooted closer to his side, scrubbing at his face and entering Extreme Study Mode (TM). He'd memorise everything and look all of the confusing terms up, Dean knew. Sam had his back.

“Well, it's mostly positive news. The seizures are under control with the change in medication and we're confident that they'll stop completely in a few days or weeks, depending on how your body reacts to its new... equilibrium.” She was hiding something there, no question, but she continued on: “We'll run more tests to make sure that there was no brain damage, but the tests we ran when you were out and the way you've responded since regaining conciousness are very positive. Your wrist should be fine once it's healed, although I'd recommend physiotherapy just as standard procedure.”

That was all good, so why the hesitation? “What new equilibrium? I get the rest but I don't understand that.”

“How much do you remember of the night before you came into hospital?” she countered.

“Uh, I finished my shift, drove back home, had something to eat... meatloaf and pie I think, drank a beer and watched some TV.” Dean blinked at the abrupt wall in his memory. “I guess that was when the seizing started, I got nothin' after that.” Sam nodded in the corner of his eye.

“Do you remember taking any pills?”

“Nope. Not so's I can remember.”

“Nothing at all? Even recreationally?”

“Like I said, I can't remember taking anything. Can't see that I would have, I don't normally take pain-killers except when I'm really sore or sick, and I don't do drugs.”

Dr Visyak searched his face for the truth before nodding in acceptance. “Well, it appears that you somehow came into contact with something that your body had an extreme reaction to, triggering off a hormonal cascade that in turn caused the seizures.”

“Okay,” Dean replied slowly. “So, something made me really sick. But it's stopped now, right?”

“The trigger chemical, or chemicals, we're still not sure exactly, are cleared from your system. What's happening now is being done by your own body, and that process is on-going.” She paused, and took a breath. “Does the term hyper-gynous mean anything to you?”

Sam stiffened at Dean's side, and turned wild eyes onto him. “Dee...”

“Isn't that the, uh, the proper word for. Uh. Omega. Right?” Dean tried not to pay attention to the heart-rate monitor, beeping his rising panic throughout the small room.

“Yes. In a number of individuals, hyper-fertility is latent rather than active. That is to say, it doesn't develop in late adolescence as it does for most hyper-gynous or hyper-androus people. It appears that you were one of these cases.”

“Were,” he repeated numbly.

“Whatever you were exposed to caused your body to start the series of changes that will end up with you being actively hyper-gynous. This does just happen to people sometimes, we can't always pinpoint a trigger. In your case, we can. This is actually a good thing for medical science, although I appreciate that has to come as a cold comfort right now.”

Dean had genuinely been punched in the gut with less force than this revelation. “You're going to tell me you can't reverse the changes, aren't you.”

She nodded, and there was sympathy in her face. “Even if we did know a way to do that, it was too late by the time you started seizing. It was probably too late within moments of ingesting the drug. You metabolised it very fast. Part of the nature of being hyper-gynous, I believe, although fertility is not my field of expertise.

“Once we're satisfied that no permanent brain damage has been done, we'll transfer you to the OBGYN unit, which will provide the specialist care your condition will need over the next few weeks. I'm afraid it's going to be a bit of a rough ride, but you'll get through it. You're a fighter, Mr Winchester. You've come very far in a short period of time, and I have no doubt that you will get through this too.”

“It's the Winchester way,” Dean replied, reaching for his trademark cocky smile and coming up short. She looked like she appreciated the effort anyway. She left him with more platitudes, which did zero to quell his fears.

 

_The screen cuts to a different figure, subtitled “Dr Cain Adamson, senior US member of UNFOU”. An intense, bearded figure in a severe suit stares at the off-screen interviewer. “The nightmare scenario for the CDC has always been that a rogue state, or terrorist organisation, would get their hands on a weaponised illness and release it onto US soil. Our nightmare scenario is very similar, but instead of the immediate death of millions, we are looking down the barrel of mass extinction of the human population._

_“There have been repeated attempts to eradicate human populations using communicable diseases such as Easter Island herpes, or Orcadian cowpox. These are not ideal as vectors of genocide, but there are always some idiots who think it's a cheap way to sterilise a population en masse.”_

 

His brother's face was almost as pale as the starched pillow it lay on, freckles standing out against his skin as if paint had been spattered on him. His eyes looked bruised, deep dark rings around them, and his lips were so parched they had cracked and bled at some point.

The nurse said he was just sleeping, but Sam didn't believe her. Surely, if Dean was sleeping, he would look better than this. He looked like he was getting worse. He looked like he was dying.

Sam hunched over himself and stroked the back of Dean's hand with trembling fingers, flinching when he hit the edge of the cast. He could still remember the sickening crack of bone when Dean's body had done its best to destroy itself. He had never even imagined something like that was possible until it had played out before his eyes.

He was the worst person alive and he hated himself more profoundly than he had hated anything or anyone in his entire life.

Deep in a spiral of recrimination and self-loathing, it took him a while to realise that Dean was making the soft sighs and little twitches that he always made when he was waking up from a deep sleep. Years of sleeping in the same room had made him as familiar with the habits and noises of his brother's body as he was with his own.

“Dean? Are you awake?” he said softly, holding his breath for the answer.

Dean was struggling to focus on his face, but his eyes were open. “I'm awake.” He sounded as bad as he looked but Sam babbled out his thanks to God anyway, Dean was talking and alive and maybe everything would be fine now. “M'okay Sammy. I'll be fine. How're you?”

Even drugged up to the eyeballs and freshly woken from a coma, his big brother was still looking after him. Sam felt his heart break all over again and he couldn't hold the tears back any more. He felt like he was walking on a knife edge inside his own mind. He needed absolution but he didn't deserve it, and he couldn't burden Dean with the truth right now, not with Dad still missing and Dean so ill. Even so, he couldn't stop apologising, over and over until the words were meaningless in his mouth. Dean consoled him in return, and the easy familiarity reassured Sam; perhaps this was just another nightmare he could wake up from. Perhaps Dean could fix everything again.

He had just about managed to get himself under control, finally thinking about Dean's recovery and forgiveness as things that were definitely going to happen, when an intern came in – he hadn't been very helpful two days ago when Sam had been swaying on his feet with exhaustion, needing answers that the intern couldn't give. He shrank in on himself again, scrubbing his eyes clean of tears and wringing his hands together compulsively.

The intern checked Dean's eye movement with a tiny torch; pricked his fingers and toes to check for nerve damage; used a tiny hammer – what was with all the tiny tools? - to check his reflexes; printed off a page of numbers from the monitors; asked him probing questions about the President and his birthday and his childhood; didn't laugh once at Sam's awkward jokes; and only left the two of them alone for the time it took to update his superior, who breezed in like she owned the place. Which, Sam supposed, was actually pretty accurate, metaphorically.

And then... Sam had once watched a film late at night on PBS, something about breaking dams in World War Two, and the planes had used carefully designed bombs and an impressive practical application of angles and parabolas to destroy German dams. All of these terribly understated British men with their codewords and accents, dropping bombs like Dean had taught him to skip stones one summer. They hit the surface of the water and bounced.

Hit, and bounce. Hit, and bounce. All the way to the dam.

Her explanation was like that, to Sam's ears. He could remember it all, but it was the bounces that stood out. “New equilibrium.” Bounce. “Do you remember taking any pills.” Bounce. “Are you familiar with the term hyper-gynous,” oh God Ash was right, bounce. “Pinpoint a trigger.” Bounce. “Too late within moments of ingesting the drug.” Bounce, and Sam was in freefall, waiting for the end.

She left the room, and Sam watched Dean. He couldn't hold his breath or Dean would know it was him. Omega? Dean? He was brash and impulsive and liked sex and food and drinking; loud and crude and tall and broad-shouldered, no chick-flick moments, don't be a girl Sammy. Nothing feminine there.

But he cooked and cleaned and tidied, and his hair was always perfect; he had looked after Sam better than their father ever had. He always knew when there was something wrong and tried to make it better. Was the rest just a mask? Had he always been hiding this part of his identity? Did Sam even know Dean at all?

Dean gave a small sigh and cleared his throat. “Dad still MIA, huh?”

Sam nodded. “I left a bunch of messages. Last one was this morning telling him the hospital said you woke up, so if he gets them all at once he won't be panicking for long. I haven't heard anything back at all,” and he couldn't stop the note of anger creeping into his voice there, even though he knew it would hurt Dean. Always the peacemaker.

This time he didn't even seem to notice Sam's frustration. “Don't... don't tell him about this, okay? I'll tell him myself.” He cleared his throat again and Sam was prompted to pour a cup of water and hold it up, but Dean shook his head. “Not right now. Drugs're makin' me nauseous. Or, well, something is, I guess,” he amended quietly. “Have you been to school?”

“You were in a coma, Dean, they're not going to mind a couple of days off for that,” Sam bitched back at him. Dean smiled faintly. “I called them and let them know, and they said it was totally fine and my teachers would give me make-up lessons if I needed them. But it's only Tuesday. Two missed days isn't going to affect my GPA.”

Dean grunted at that, leaning his head back against the pillow with a grimace. “If I'm... gonna be here for a while, you should stay with Ellen until Dad gets back. Not that you can't look after yourself, I know, but... it'd make me feel better.” His jaw flexed.

“Of course, Dee,” Sam said softly, closing his eyes against the tears that were suddenly threatening to return. He hadn't even thought about the fact that he was on his own until Dean made it out of hospital, and from what the doctor had said that could take weeks. The longest John had been away for on a job had been five months, a few years back. Sam knew that in six months' time he would be at college and looking after himself but he would let Dean look after him if it meant an easier recovery for him.

Besides, he wanted to be looked after right now, and Ellen was good at that.

“I'm gonna need a couple things brought in, okay? My phone and some clothes, the insurance details, and uh... there's a folder in the bottom drawer by my bed. The blue one. Not the red one. Do not look in the red one. That's my porn stash.” Dean gave a terrible impression of his usual smirk but Sam rolled his eyes anyway.

“I thought your porn stash was under your bed?”

“Never have just one porn stash, Sammy. That way, if you get caught, you have a back-up.”

“That both makes a lot of sense and is really disgusting. Like you.”

“Bitch.”

“Jerk,” Sam grinned. Dean would be okay. He was still Dean, and he would get better, and everything would go back to normal and Sam would be forgiven. It just might take a little longer than they would like.

 

_“Don't we already have a defence against plagues like that, in the hyper-androus and hyper-gynous populations?” asks the interviewer._

_“Yes, but that presents us with a genetic bottleneck,” Dr Adamson explains. “Hyper-fertility frequently presents within families, so in small populations the survivors are usually already related to one another. This encourages mutation. Which, of course, is an advantage as far as evolution is concerned. But in human time-scales, it's a problem.”_

 

It took a long time to hang up, his fingers clumsy and unresponsive with the pain, and the drugs, and whatever the fuck was going on with his body. Dean shied away from thinking about it too closely. Fuck this hyper-gynous shit. Maybe it would go away?

Pain lanced briefly through his abdomen as some previously unknown muscle cramped, and he flinched. This might be here to stay, and that meant that sooner or later, he would have to deal.

Well, shit.

His temperature had been spiking and dropping for hours now, according to the monitor. He thought it was starting to climb again, as his eyes felt like they were sweating, which was usually a good indicator of a fever. He had been mostly okay while speaking to Ellen, at least, and the message he left Dad was almost certainly coherent.

His skin crawled with cold, or something, and he shivered. John was MIA and nothing could be done about that, but Ellen was more than happy to look after Sam. She had wanted to come visit, but Dean had managed to direct her energies at Sam instead. He was still in Intensive Care right now, but he would be moved to OBGYN tomorrow, and oh god, that thought made his stomach roil.

Actually, no, he was just really nauseous and he couldn't control it with deep breathing or whatever – he pressed he call button and flailed for a cardboard puke container, trying to push himself upright as best he could. The nausea climbed, but he didn't throw up; he could feel his face whiten and chill, sweat collected on his skin, and the faint tremula of the past hour blossomed into full shaking.

The cardboard container slipped from his hand and he realised his fingers were numb. The nausea was unbearable now, and he gasped for breath as his head spun violently, no longer able to tell where anything was. He was going to be sick. He was going to die. He definitely wished he was dead right now.

The fizzing in his fingers roared up into his eyes, and everything went strange - 

but not for that long, he thought blurrily, eyes fighting for focus and body trembling as the lovely nurse from last night tried to get him to focus.

“...my voice, Dean, try to focus,” she said, shining a light into his eyes. He flinched away from it with a barely voiced groan and she smiled at him. “There we go, back with me again.”

Dean tried to focus on her. “What's happening to me?” His voice was weak and quavering, and he was afraid like he'd never been before; not in fights, not when the perp had guns, not when Dad was shot. “'Nother seizure?”

She looked sympathetically at him. “What did you feel before it happened?”

“Felt sick as a dog. Thought I was gonna hurl, and then I got real cold, and then everything went fuzzy, and then you were talking to me.”

“Sounds like you were hypoglycaemic. That means your blood sugar dipped low,” she explained. “It's not uncommon when someone becomes hyper-gynous. Your body's doing a lot of work, it's using a lot of fuel to do it, and that means sometimes it runs out.”

Stupid body, doing things Dean didn't want it to do, making him weak and faint and sick and sore. He sighed in relief when she rested a cool hand against his forehead. “Your fever's spiking again, I'll get you an analgesic,” she murmured. “That won't be helping either. Did you manage anything to eat earlier?”

“Had two mouthfuls and then threw up,” Dean replied sourly. “I've been feeling sick all day.”

“It's probably the anti-epileptics but I'll see if the doctor will prescribe you something for that too.” She made a note on his chart.

He must have made a noise, or maybe she was just psychic, because she looked over at him again and immediately put on a mom-face. “Oh, sweetheart, don't worry. It'll get better. We're here to take good care of you, and everything will be fine, okay?”

Dean had to set his jaw against the quavering of his lip at the kindness in her voice, exactly what he needed to hear. If it wasn't okay to be scared and emotional in a hospital, when was it okay? “Thanks,” he whispered gruffly. She smiled at him, told him to hit the call button if he needed anything, and left him alone again.

He really had to get it together. His usually epic control of his emotions was breaking down, and he couldn't convince himself that he was even a little bit okay. All of the drugs were making him woolly-headed, and he couldn't work out if the fatigue and nausea came from them or from the – the things that were happening to his guts.

Aching and afraid, it took him a long time to fall asleep, and his dreams were full of shadows and blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AFAIK, neither Easter Island herpes nor Orcadian cowpox are actually real. Herpes is pretty contagious, and it's incurable, but it's a relapsing/remitting illness - it goes away and comes back again. The Wikipedia page is very educational but has a few gruesome pictures. Big thing to remember is that it'll go away by itself, although it will come back occasionally, and it's possible to transmit oral herpes (coldsores) to genital herpes, and vice versa. Other than that it's not usually a big deal, and it causes no fertility problems and rarely passes from mother to child - in the West, they'll just give you a c-section now if that's a risk.
> 
> Cowpox is closely related to smallpox, and it's pretty common in cattle, so anyone who worked closely with cattle would catch cowpox and be immune to smallpox - cowpox is much less lethal and doesn't leave scarring as long as you don't itch it. This is why milkmaids were traditionally portrayed as beautiful - they'd had cowpox, so when smallpox swept through a region they were fine. Smallpox, though, was totally brutal. Do not google for pictures if you are easily grossed out. There's a reason why it was the first (and so far only, thanks to various forms of propaganda and misinformation) disease we eradicated.
> 
> Orkney is an island chain just to the north of Scotland, and the adjective form is Orcadian. The word is probably Latin, and I don't think any of them use it, but it's a lovely sound (or-KAY-dee-ann). I'm not sure how many cows are on Orkney; there's not much there apart from Bronze Age ruins and fishing, and not a lot of properly arable land. They're weird up there, but not as weird as Shetlanders. (No-one's as weird as Shetlanders. I know too many of them not to believe that.)
> 
> Hope you liked the chapter! This is the last of the completed chapter bank that I had, but the entire first part of this fic is extensively planned out, in my head and a little bit on actual paper, so I know exactly where I need to go. I have some health stuff right now which is messing with my focus a little, but this will keep coming. I've been plotting this for well over a year now: I know what I want to do with it and how. I'll warn you now, it's going to take a long time for the storylines to start coming together. I anticipate at least another twelve chapters before I hit part two, and that number is only likely to increase, as is inevitable. And I don't know how long part two will be yet. At least the same again, I think. I am still reserving judgement on the possibility of a part three.
> 
> As always, hit me up here or on [tumblr](http://knittedgauntlets.tumblr.com/) if you have any questions/comments/feedback. I love knowing what you think. :)


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